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Three Vaulted Basilicas in Cyprus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

A. H. S. Megaw
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Extract

Sir George Hill, in his History of Cyprus, refers to a group of early churches in the Island in the following passage: ‘It seems improbable that any important buildings can have been put up during the periods of the Arab raids, that is, from the middle of the eighth century to 965. Churches, for instance, like those at Aphendrika, which have been attributed on the one hand to the sixth or seventh century, on the other to the “Romanesque,” would not have been built at a time when the population of places like Ayios Philon and Lambousa was moving inland to escape the raiders. Whether the earlier or the later date is to be preferred must be left to the specialists.' In a footnote, he recorded my own opinion that the vaulted basilicas of the Aphendrika type should be dated after the Byzantine reconquest. The purpose of this article is to present some evidence in support of that opinion. It concerns three ruined churches, all in the village lands of Rizokarpaso: the Panayia and Asomatos churches at Aphendrika, the site, which Hogarth identified as Urania, near the north coast 5 miles north-east of the village, and the Panayia at Sykha, some 6 miles south-west of the village, on the south side of the Karpas peninsula.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 66 , November 1946 , pp. 48 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1946

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References

1 SirHill, George, A History of Cyprus, I (Cambridge, 1940), 322Google Scholar.

2 Hogarth, D. G., Devia Cypria (London, 1889), 85Google Scholar.

3 Enlart, C., L'Art Gothique et la Renaissance en Chypre, (Paris, 1899), 395–401Google Scholar.

4 Jeffery, G., A Description of the Historic Monuments of Cyprus (Nicosia, 1918), 258–260Google Scholar.

5 Gunnis, R., Historic Cyprus (London, 1936), 167 and 414Google Scholar.

6 Soteriou, G., (, 1931), 8Google Scholar; Τὰ Βυӡαντινὰ Μνημεῖα τῆς Κύπρου, Ἀ (Athens, 1935)Google Scholar, Fig. 4 and Pls. 10a, 11a and 15a (Panayia); Fig. 5 and Pls. 11b and 12 (Aso-matos).

7 The work was of the nature of ‘first aid’ treatment and was carried out by the Cyprus Government Department of Antiquities, with the aid of contributions from the neighbouring monastery of Apostolos Andreas and from he Cyprus Monuments Fund.

8 In the recent conservation works the damaged outer thickness of the south wall was rebuilt plumb to support the miss of masonry abutting on it.

9 Soteriou, Βυӡ. Μνημ., Pl. 15a.

10 Clearance was limited to the interior; what is left of the external faces of the apses remains concealed in debris, consequently the thickness of their masonry could not be measured (Fig. 12).

11 Soteriou, op. cit., Pl. 13a.

12 A good example in the same neighbourhood is Ayios Philon at Agridhia (Soteriou, op. cit., Fig. 29).

13 That is, before the construction of the later central dome, the vaults east and west of it and the added supports built against the earlier arcades to carry them (Soteriou op. cit., Fig. 20). In this intermediate state it was, I believe, a reconstruction of an early columnar basilica, of which the main apse has been incorporated in the present building and to which the columns and capitals used in the south porch doubtless belonged. Some interesting features of the intermediate period were disclosed by the removal of plaster carried out in conjunction with repairs in 1941, under the direction of Mr. Th. Mogabgab.

14 Soteriou, op. cit., Fig. 6; for the earlier remains, Report of the Dept. of Antiquities, Cyprus, 1935, 14 ff.Google Scholar

15 Soteriou, op. cit., Fig. 15.

16 Soteriou, Fig. 7 and Pl. 13b.